The Best of Vietnam: Mar 27—Apr 16, 2010

Whiskered Yuhina — Photo: Susan Myers

The most diverse country in Southeast Asia, Vietnam is a truly fascinating place both in terms of its culture and its wildlife. We will visit a diverse selection of some of Vietnam's best national parks and reserves. We have a good chance of observing a selection of Vietnam's fine endemics and a number of other restricted-range species.

Indochina, particularly Vietnam, harbors some of Southeast Asia's most alluring and fascinating landscapes, blessed with a remarkable diversity of habitats. As we discovered on previous tours, despite the damage done to Vietnam's natural environment in past years, many superb areas persist, especially within the nation's excellent and expanding system of reserves and national parks. We will explore the very best of these reserves and seek out some of the least-known, extremely localized, and most fascinating birds and mammals in the whole of Asia. These include the globally-threatened Black-faced Spoonbill, Germain's Peacock-Pheasant, gorgeous Siamese Firebacks and Silver Pheasants, the globally threatened and spectacular Green Peafowl, perhaps Baer's Pochard, and several hornbills.

This most accessible birding destination in Indochina holds the highest number of endemics in mainland Southeast Asia, for example, the elusive Red-collared Woodpecker, Red-vented Barbet, recently rediscovered Gray-crowned Crocias, the gorgeous Collared Laughingthrush, and Vietnamese Greenfinch, as well as six very rare pheasants! On top of this plethora of beauties we have a whole suite of nifty Asian Broadbills, gorgeous Bar-bellied and Blue-rumped pittas, the peculiar Ratchet-tailed Treepie, and a galaxy of laughingthrushes and babblers, several of which are found virtually nowhere else in the world.

Our tour will cover the southern lowlands of Cat Tien, the delightful hill station town of Da Lat (with its many specialties), and the wonderful lowland limestone karst forest of Cuc Phuong near Hanoi. We have devised our itinerary to give ourselves the best chance of finding Vietnam's very special birds—endemics, near endemics, and others, not to mention mammals—by visiting a wide range of habitats in all the best reserves, thus providing an incomparable tour of Vietnam.

A trip to Vietnam is an absolute must for those who love to travel, to explore, and to experience a completely new land—its fauna, flora, history, culture, and cuisine.

Excellent to good accommodations; great food; travel by minibus and plane; mostly roadside birding with a couple of boat trips and some very moderate walking; midday breaks on most days; warm and moderately humid in the south, cool to cold weather in the north.